INTERVIEW: Psychocide

Hi guys, welcome to VENTS! How have you been?

We are doing great, thanks for having us on VENTS.

Can you talk to us more about your latest single “Temporary Friends”?

Temporary Friends, I think is getting mistaken for a lot of things. It’s not about a one-night stand. It’s really just about people you bond with at parties, it may just be a night, but so many things usually happened in one night when I lived in NYC. I ended up in the weirdest places, befriended the weirdest people, but like the saying goes every stranger is a friend I haven’t met yet. Even though I would never see these people again we shared something that always had the same recurring goal, finding the next party.

Did any event in particular inspired you to write this song?

Actually there is one particular event I can recall. After having partied pretty hard for a few days straight, the crash was one of the most awful I had experienced in my life. I felt like I was having fever, I kept sweating, I couldn’t sleep, I was too awake for that but too wasted to move or do anything besides lying in bed. For a minute I managed to close my eyes and dose off. When I woke, I had no clue where I was or who I was. That confused and frightened me. It was as though my brain had to slowly retrace footsteps from my only memory to how I ended up in NYC, in this apartment, In my own bedroom.

This was the inspiration to the opening lines of the song.

Any plans to release a video for the single?

No, I don’t think I would be able to recreate anything close to what actually happened during those times. But who knows maybe in the future we may release a short film about it.

The single comes off your new album Alcohol & Bad Decisions – what’s the story behind the title?

The album title? Well let’s just say that I didn’t always make the best decisions drunk. I mean sure I ended up in some odd situations I wouldn’t have had, had I been sober. They are what allowed me to write all those songs, but a lot of those situations could have gone horribly wrong.

How was the recording and writing process?

That’s is a very hard one to explain. The writing process is weird, at least mine. Sometimes a song just writes itself and others you really have to dig into some personal (unresolved most of the time) issues. But even sometimes that doesn’t come out as you would want. Being riffs don’t sound like they do in my head, and I can’t properly translate my feelings into words. It took about 1-2 years to get the ideas floating, and a week deadline which pushed me to puke everything out on paper.

The recording process was fun. I just came off recording my solo album “The Goldwyn Experiment – Avenue A” So I was pretty aware how to proceed, how to preserve my voice and how to go about the pre-production process etc..

What was it like to work with Christian Cummings and how did that relationship develop?

It was pretty cool. He mixed my solo record. At first I wanted to have one song mixed to see how we would work together. That went well and so we did my solo record together. Then that led to the Psychocide Record. At which point we got along well, we understood how each other worked and he was an awesome guide to have through this journey.

How much did he influence the album?

I think sonically its all him. I mean I know guitars how they should sound, and I write all the parts for the other instruments, but other than that, he knew which tones to go for based on records I liked, he knew THE DRUMS. HE is the man when it comes to that, and he was very particular when it came to performance, which is a really cool thing to have an engineer care that much about your record.

What comic books served as an inspiration for the lyrics?

That’s actually a funny question. None. I haven’t picked up a comic book since I was 12. All the lyrics are based on the period of my life when I lived in NYC, more specifically The Villager’s 5F.

What aspect of alcohol and bad decisions did you get to explore on this particular album? Where did you find the inspiration for the songs and lyrics?

Jack Daniels. I don’t know how I feel about that particular liquor anymore. I always end up in the weirdest situations when I’ve had too many. I usually have mine in a particular way too, It’s Jack on the Rocks with a slice of lime.

I ended up in Paris once after a night out in Glasgow, Scotland. I was almost arrested for public urination in NYC, but somehow talked my way out of it, Similarly I think I literally painted one of the main streets in Glasgow in red smoke, Invited the whole Motor Bar (on their closing night in NYC) back to our apartment for an after party which I left shortly after (lesson learnt from that one don’t leave a bunch of punk heads unattended at your place at 6am)

I mean these are just a few things that happened, so you can see where the inspiration, lyrics and songs came from.

Any plans to hit the road?

HELL YEAH! Right after our release gig March 2nd at Piranha Bar in MTL we plan to hit a few places around the Quebec area, and we are currently looking and working out logistics to do a tour further out.

What else is happening next in Psychocide’s world?

Well we have the New video for “Mr. Suit” coming out soon, we have “Mary” & “Crazy Janet” in post production, we are headlining 2 gigs in the coming weeks. We have the 1st draft for our comic book ready and now the illustrations are about to begin, we also have to cool merch in the making (we are trying to make them unique) and also Vinyls are being pressed.

Finally even though the Debut Record is not quiet out yet, we are working on some new stuff already which we will be trying out in the coming gigs.